More calla lilies and pears

The show at West Hartford is coming up this weekend and I'm getting busy. Here are the latest paintings.

Dogs I've met that made me smile

I have a new theme that I'm working on---Dog's I've Met That Made Me Smile. These are little 6x8 inch oil sketches that are really a lot of fun.

At art shows people frequently bring their dogs and when I see a dog that elicits a smile, I usually grab a camera and take a picture. The title says it all.

Calla lilies

A while back I got the idea to paint calla lilies. They are so austerely beautiful and I had in mind to paint some white ones. Having said that, finding some up here in the north country in March is another story. I had to order some mini-calla lilies online which came in a bouquet of 10 pink and 10 white and cost $50. I also ordered the square vase for another $10 because it looked perfect with the lilies in the picture.

Well, never believe the picture in an ad. When they arrived, the vase was HUGE, way too big for the little lilies. I was scrambling to find a vase before my $50 investment bit the dust. After watching some You Tube videos on flower arranging, one of the presenters suggested Crate and Barrel as a good source of interesting vases. I went down to my local store and came away with a pretty good haul of vases, the most interesting being the Ono vase, which is a round vase with a hole in it. Very interesting and very contemporary. Hope you like them.

I learned one thing with this painting. Never make a fruit/flower still life larger than life unless it is REALLY huge. If you make it, say, 150% of life, he fruit will appear as Uber Fruit. I originally drew it larger than it is but I had to start all over and make everything smaller. I'll stick to 1:1 in the future.

Gladiolas

Every now and then I enjoy doing flowers. I originally started this painting for a demonstration at an art league meeting. I came in with the grisaille (gray underpainting) already done and demonstrated the initial stages of layering glaze over it.

Continuing this painting at home, I used for the first time the color Rose Madder Genuine by Winsor Newton. This is one of those oil colors that art stores keep behind the counter. AT $30 a tube, they are afraid of shoplifters. But it's well worth the $30. It is a deep rose color which, combined with the technique of glazing, creates the most incredible color.

Little paintings

Karin Jurick is a painter who does the most gorgeous small paintings. I read on her blog that she paints on panels that have been gessoed BLACK. I thought I'd give it a try. I bought some 6x8" canvases and gessoed them black. God, it was like I'd never painted before. The first few were tough, but I am pleased with these last three. The first one is of the saddling area at Saratoga racetrack. The last two are of Cocoa Beach in Florida.

West Hartford show

Thunderstorms. The bane of the outdoor shows. Not just rain, that annoying stuff that drives away customers and makes everything wet. We're talking about cloud-to-ground lightening, howling winds, lashing rain. After a humid morning and afternoon, thunderstorms struck the West Hartford show about 4:00. When you're in a tent with metal rods, the best thing to do is zipper up and head for the nearest shelter. I spent an hour in a minivan with my fellow artists, watching the tents and actually seeing some of them collapse.

When the lightening and rain abated, I made it back to my tent. The roof had collapsed in the corners, spraying every thing with water. It was my own dumb fault. I had brought my light and easy-to-put-up tent top instead of the heavy duty but rainproof one. The mattes on all the prints were ruined where the water had soaked in. However, oil paintings are virtually indestructible, and with the exception of one corner of a frame where the veneer lifted and one linen canvas that needs to be restretched, I was in pretty good shape. After borrowing towels and doing my best to dry off everything, I loaded all the paintings into my car.

I spent Saturday evening rematting all the framed prints (glamorous life being an artist, isn't it?) and headed back to the show Sunday morning and set everything back up. I then had the best show of my entire career!!! Almost double my previous high!

This was a painting that I had just finished, called Tobacco Barns. It was from a scene in nearby Simsbury, just after sunset. Since it was large (30x40") it drew quite a bit of attention. This was the first time I showed it and it sold on Sunday.